Arthur. W. Simpson.
Arthur W Simpson of Kendal one of the most important Master Craftsman from the Arts & Crafts Movement, a leading carver and designer of domestic & ecclesiastical furniture at the end of the nineteenth & beginning of the 20th century.. He was born in Highgate Kendall on December 7th 1857 in the heart of England's Lake District, during his childhood he was constantly in trouble with his father for poaching a pocket knife & cutting sticks from a Willow tree in his garden. As a child he loathed school & no sooner than his mother had dropped him at school, that he'd made his escape. He was always carving objects for friends & for favours after school hours & even took projects to bed with him thus waking up with his bed sheets filled with wood carvings. At the age of 14 Simpson was adamant he wanted to become a carver & was apprenticed to Robert Rigg a new cabinet making company who had recently opened but the work he was given was not much in the line of wood carving & when he had to make a coffin & was persuaded to help put the body into it he vowed to leave at the next opportunity. He then heard that Gillows of Lancaster were looking for an apprentice carver where he went for an interview & gained the job & started work on Monday the 4th of October 1875 where he stayed learning his trade for just under 4 years & while at Gillows he made friends with William Murry a deaf mute who worked at the same bench as Simpson whom he learned to communicate with on his fingers & learnt a great deal about cabinet making from this excellent draughtsman & shared many long walks together in their spare time. In September 1879 he left Gillows to pursue more skills & went to Leicester gaining employment with Samuel Barfield a "Master Carver" himself whom employed around 30 carvers where he stayed for 15 months & resided with his Uncle Thomas & his Auntie Lizzie Seddon.
He worked in many parts of the country before settling momentarily in Kendal, where he opened for business in 1881 at 22a Highgate. Kendall. A short lived experiment where he came into debt to the sum of £30 over a 12 month period & decided that Kendall wasn't the best place for a carver to be & on advice went to London to find work where he was employed by Osmonds. At Osmonds he felt the work they gave him would not teach him much & continued looking for work traipsing from workshop to workshop until he gained employment with William Aumonier's in Tottenham Court Road & here he met a very skilful carver called Mackie & learnt a great deal from him in the short period of 5 month's that he worked for Aumoniers. (He was let go due to work waning at Aumoniers).
Simpson was known to love walking almost as much as he loved to work with wood & it was at this point in his life after he had been made redundant at Aumoniers that he decided to walk 252 miles home to Kendall to be the best man for his cousins wedding to be held on the 31st of August 1882. After the wedding he set off in search of more work where he gained employment in Altringham for H. Faulkner Armitage although little is known of his work there it seems he stayed in Altringham until sometime in 1885 when he returned to Kendal. From 1885 he taught in local villages & from 1886 he taught classes at the Keswick School of Industrial Art while doing carving for church interiors. Also in 1886 Simpson employed his first employee 'Tom Dixon' on April 9th & therefore it must be at this point that the beginnings of what would later become "The Handicrafts" evolved although the name "The Handicrafts" wouldn't be introduced until the end of Queen Victoria's reign. In the summer of 1887 he became engaged to Jane Davidson while on holiday in the Isle of Man & they were married in March 1888. In this year he was also employing a number of craftsmen all involved with church & domestic interiors, carving & making furniture. The workshops were originally at Berry's Yard in Kendal but later moved to Queen Katherine Buildings in the Christmas of 1896 & "The Handicrafts" was not coined until 1901 when a new showroom was opened in Windermere & it was this showroom which was originally named as "The Handicrafts", the company name which would continue until the company's end in 1951 was not transferred to the workshops at Queen Katherine Buildings until 1906. Arthur Simpson made furniture to designs by C.F.A.Voysey & interior work in houses which Voysey designed, Voysey was one of the most famous & influential Architect/Designers of the Arts & Crafts Movement known for his superior architectural achievements & the incrediable simplicity of his designs. He designed from the buildings conception to everything within the building including the interiors, the furniture, metal wears, carpets, curtains, wallpapers, lighting, fireplaces right down to the salt & pepper pot on the dining table, all within the umbrella of the Arts & Crafts Movement & always impeccably dressed wearing a flamboyant Liberty cravat. Voysey designed a house for Simpson & his family called Littleholme & Simpson & Voysey became over a long period great friends yet many people were quite weary of Voysey as he was a very stern & fastidious man & many including the Simpson family stood in awe of him but Simpson whom had a very strong will, "stood in Awe of no man". Arthur Simpson's most famous interior was for Blackwell designed by another famous Architect/Designer of the period M.H.Ballie Scott, Blackwell is a beautiful property over looking Lake Windermere & Simpson did most of the internal woodwork from skirting to staircases carved panelling, doors, exposed beamwork & some furniture. The house is a monument to Ballie Scott's designs & Simpson's work. Blackwell is now open to the public & holds regular exhibitions throughout the year, it is a superb example still with its original period interior & probably the most important & complete example from the Arts & Crafts Movement in England today. Arthur Simpson was a genius with wood his precision engineering is so perfect in his work that I believe he could have made an engine from wood & it would start up & actually run, albeit for a few seconds.
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